Friday, January 31, 2014

[Note:
This post, prepared originally for the NC Folklife Institute's NCFood blog, is
hosted on the institute’s website, with excerpts and a link to the website
posted here.]

The
center of small town is not always a town hall, courthouse, or church.
Sometimes it’s a pot of bubbling stew as it is each fall in Mount Gilead, a community of slightly more than 1,000
residents in Montgomery County. Although the community is small, just about
everyone knows about the Brunswick stew served when Brown’s Hardware has its
open house.

A tasty pot of Brunswick stewcreates a lot of interest.

Incorporated
in 1899, Mount Gilead boasts a downtown historic district listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The heart of historic downtown is a
hardware store that has been open continuously for more than 100 years, and the
floor creaks like it is even older. Known now as Brown’s Hardware, the business
presents itself as an “old timey general store and mercantile,” and it is.

Friday, January 17, 2014

[Note: This post, prepared originally for the NC Folklife Institute's NCFood blog, is hosted on the institute’s website, with excerpts and a link to the website posted here.]

North Carolina produces about half of all the sweet potatoes grown
in the United States, and it has consistently ranked as the top producing state
for more than 30 years. More than half of the state’s sweet potatoes are grown
in only three counties – Sampson, Nash, and Johnston. These counties in eastern
N.C. are prime growing locations with their rich, fertile soil and their hot,
moist climate.

Sweet potatoes can be delivered by unusual means.

Although the typical movement from farm to table involves a
grocery store or chain, sometimes a food bank and its network of volunteers
spring into action to provide sweet potatoes to families in need. Sweet
potatoes are an excellent choice of fresh nutrition for these families that
need to stretch their food budgets with healthy produce and supplement foods
provided in other programs.